Kathryn's story continue.......

Sunday morning at 9am isn’t a slot I would envy the speaker. I’d expected a slow, gentle start to the second day, to ease us in, but that’s not what we got. Local businesswoman, social media coach and motivational speaker Kym Hall, came and fired us up for the day in addition to delivering a fantastic training on harnessing the power of social media, focusing particularly on Twitter.  

Social media session with local business women Social Media Kym

I’d always avoided it myself, uncertain about the platform’s etiquette or whether I would even have anything interesting to say. Kym talk about her tips and experiences was a real highlight of the weekend, leaving us all feeling energised, and me in particular inspired to start putting her advice into action. Although I’m still just a baby chick, my Twitter confidence is growing daily and I hope soon to spread my wings even further! Current JCI National President Solveig Malvik also very kindly came to train us on how to manage and edit the JCI website: a vital tool for any would-be local (or national) JCI Marketing Directors. The final session was on measuring the impact of your communications and marketing activities – after all, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. The most important lesson I took away was to try things out, and if something’s not working, stop doing it. The more I thought about it on the way home, I realised this was good advice for life, not just for marketing!

The weekend’s challenge – because the best way of learning is by doing - was to put our new skills into practise by preparing a marketing plan, geared towards helping one of four fictitious JCI chapters to overcome diverse communications challenges such as: increasing low membership numbers; boosting member engagement; launching a new chapter; and strengthening relations with the local community. Working in small groups and then presenting our plan back to the room was nerve-wracking, but an incredibly effective way of making us really use what we’d learnt, and gave us all loads of ideas for boosting the performance of our own local chapters.

JCI Sheffield and JCI London members working the marketing task

As well as learning new skills, I also made new friends, and came away feeling incredibly inspired. I got more than I bargained for: but what else would you expect from a JCI event? On the drive down the M1 back to London my head was buzzing with new ideas, and I have already started to put my new skills into practise in my professional life. I’d highly recommend the JCI Marketing Academy and would even go so far as to say that it’s the best £55 I’ve spent so far this year. If you get the chance to go in future, whether you’re a professional communicator or not, jump at it – it’s a terrific course and a really worthwhile investment.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

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